Showing posts with label Teaching. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Teaching. Show all posts

Thursday, March 14, 2024

seeing red

Lysne Beckwith Tait, founder of Helping Women Period, presented to my WGS students today. She also set up a "menstrual products petting zoo" in class for people to check out. As she rightly pointed out, when menstrual cups, discs, and undies are in packaging, it is difficult to figure out if one would be comfortable using them.

I absolutely love the story of the growth of the organization--it started out after a conversation with friends and now influences, advocates, and educates--it was instrumental in repealing our tampon tax last year, for instance. Lysne's book Instigator: Creating Change Without Being the Loudest Voice in the Room comes out later this year, and I can't wait!

Pic: Saying goodbye to Lysne in the parking lot. Of course, the Helping Women Period van is red. Mid-cycle red.

Tuesday, March 12, 2024

looking up

At the beginning of class, I make space for students to share what they're presenting/performing/playing and send shout-outs to classmates. Today, one of them mentioned that I would be on the panel for the Gaza teach-in on Monday and said it was a shout-out to me. It was such a small thing, but I felt so seen and supported. 

I also spent time today answering questions for an article on the "uncommitted" vote movement for the student newspaper. Students have been wonderful allies, and their idealism and outrage have helped me feel hopeful for the world. I'm convinced the push by our elderly lawmakers to ban TikTok is because that platform bypasses the hangups and hurdles of legacy media and makes it easy for young people to inform and organize amongst themselves.

Pic: Random, ultra-bright, volunteer crocuses that showed up on our driveway this morning. 

Friday, March 08, 2024

more tea

This Friday started off slow--just a couple of advising meetings in the morning. But the afternoon was chairing the WGS section of MASAL, presenting a paper, showing up to a mentoring pod (somehow, I'm the senior-most and the most mentor-y), and then the faculty meeting. The final part of the workday was the annual International Women's Day Tea at MacCurdy House

The last part was my favorite, but I was tired when I got home. Thus endeth (I think!) my spate of late evenings at work this semester. 

Pic: Tea at MacCurdy. The Eleanor Roosevelt quote framed on the wall makes it perfect: “A woman is like a tea bag. You never know how strong it is until it's in hot water.”  Memories of other years: Pre-pandemic and Post-pandemic

Wednesday, February 28, 2024

Hello, it is me I'm looking for

Today was mostly spent in what my dad would call a "funk." But I'm on my winter break and I'll funk if I want to.

I still managed to renew my Driver's License, arrange catering for a campus event next week, and finalize the speaker series for Women's History Month. 

I feel sad and helpless, and I told Big A that I was going to take my emergency prescription medication, but I didn't (I'm always "saving" it in case I have I bigger crisis). I drank a lot of tea instead, clung to him like a baby monkey, and then rallied to make up and make an amazing dinner (rice with arugula, five-color veggies + beans braised with miso, sesame oil, and nori). 

And then as a reward, I found birthday cards in the mail! They were such a sweet surprise and such a cheery pick-me-up.

Pic: Also immensely cheering, my fuzzy welcome committee. Max and Huck always pop up to say hello as I unlock the back door.

Tuesday, February 27, 2024

in solidarity

Overwhelmed by the sacrifice of Aaron Bushnell, which I had barely begun to process yesterday.

 Heartbroken/Awestruck. 

What an empathetic, sincere, radical, and idealistic soul... What a lesson in being true to his conscience and his long history of mutual aid. He had recently been deployed to Israel as a U.S. airman, and I want to question why we're getting involved in the fighting rather than the peacemaking too.

Speaking of which, nearly 100,000 people in Michigan voted "uncommitted" today to challenge U.S. complicity in the Palestinian genocide... the goal had been to get 10K votes. I dislike how the media has painted this as an "Arab-American and Muslim" issue when it's really a humanitarian issue. So yes, Dearborn, which has a large Arab-American population, voted approx. 75% uncommitted, but Washtenaw, which has no significant Arab-American presence, also voted approx. 25% uncommitted. I don't have numbers for Ingham where Big A, At, and I voted. The "Listen to Michigan" campaign was started just about three weeks ago, so this is impressive.

Aaron Bushnell's sacrifice and the uncommitted votes are also a hopeful sign of humanitarian solidarity and moral clarity for me. It is difficult to go on day after day knowing we're actively vetoing ceasefires and sending arms to kill civilians but having to act like everything is normal.

Pic: I was at work today, and wanted to get a closeup of the "touchstone" LK made me--it is actually beautifully planed wood with copper insets that are almost like constellations. But then I got a bit distracted by the sunlight filtering through my office plants. The "toys" are a miniature Freedom Rider bus that KB gave me from her visit to the Legacy Museum and an auto-rickshaw my mom gave me after Nu and I had an adventure in one last year. 

Monday, February 19, 2024

updates

Good:  Big A's test results came back--nothing terrifying to report.
But:     The original symptoms persist. 
*
Good:  My stretch of overwork and late work evenings is mostly over.
But:     This week I scheduled two more late work evenings for March.
*
Good:   Participating in a teach-in panel on Gaza with the college YDSA in mid-March.
But:      Worrying about bothsideism from fellow-panelists.
*
[Pic] 
Good:    Big A, Huck, Max, and me on a post-dinner walk with a fabulous sunset ahead of us.
 But:     Don't look too closely at Big A's left hand. Ha.

Wednesday, February 14, 2024

love notes

We (Big A and I) don't celebrate Valentine's Day. We celebrate other days like the anniversary of our first and epic date, etc. But I LOVE elementary-school-style Valentine's Days: Candy for all! Cards for all!

I tried to recreate a little bit of that olde magic in class yesterday with a "Pal-entine's Day" celebration--there was candy and stickers people could share with each other. I expected to merely be the facilitator but some people made little notes for me too. I love the one that said, "Thank you for creating an inclusive classroom for all and expanding my love of literature." I love my students. 

I already gave the fam their V-Day treasures and treats, and it was just Nu, Huck, Max, and me at home today (Big A is in Milwaukee). I felt Nu might need some extra love so I picked up a few treats (ice-cream, Krispy Kremes, Kit-Kats) when I gassed up the car on my way home and made some heart-shaped caramel and chocolate cookies. Nu's delight was everything. I love Nu so much.

And my gal-pals took care of me. Lovely LD sent me a Galentine's Day care package via mail that had some serious Sephora goodies and a powdered drink mix I can't wait to try on the weekend. JG said I was her favorite Galentine and sent me a picture from Costa Rica of a howler monkey (!), and I nearly lost it when KB said she was loving me "from afar" (I MISS KB!!!!). I love my women friends. 

Pic: A jumble of V-Day stuff on the counter today. Also: the Spring planting catalog arrived in the mail like a present from the universe. 

Monday, February 12, 2024

But after this week things'll slow down...

I saw this meme that's sometimes about academia and sometimes about adulthood recently. It goes: Being an adult/academic is saying "But after this week things will slow down a bit" over and over to yourself until you die.

Oh, I feel this so much. But also, things really are going to slow down after this week. I listed a long list of 'have to-be-dones' for myself last month and the deadlines on most of them have come and gone and I've done my best on each of them. The last of the colleague letters and student award letters went out today, our last campus visit was today, and one of our two speakers is presenting this week--which means my list has been significantly whittled down and the future looks so much more manageable.

Technically, that means I should be able to work on my projects for a bit. No more excuses.

Pic: From yesterday. Max and Big A in my tea garden where I'd gone to escape everyone. (Not successfully, evidently.)

Thursday, February 08, 2024

on not meeting expectations

I don't like my grade the student says
You're not from here, are you?
the student says

So where are you actually from? 
(India!) I thought so...
student smiles

I got the assignment wrong because
of your language (English?) 
the student says

It is so rude of you, the student says
to say... that my assignment 
didn't meet expectations
____________________________________________

Note: This came from a long and unsettling office-hour exchange with my one disgruntled student today. It felt demeaning and I was so... crushed. Luckily, it was also the day our PR team had alerted me to an alumni interview which spoke glowingly of me, so I had some balance. But I'd been working on a new version of our land and labor acknowledgment, so it also felt like I'd been wrestling with issues of prejudice all day. 

Pic: No pic today--it was too, too hectic. My Thursdays are so long that they've become standard Subway-for-dinner days--Big A picks them up between his clinic and hospital shifts.

Tuesday, February 06, 2024

and now we wait...

 

Home! 

Reunited with my human kids, puppy kids, and plants!

I demolished a large bag of Culver's fries on the way home and demolished all my remaining grading after I got home. 

Big A's doc gave us a hopeful update and now we wait for the actual results. Oh, the things I take for granted when I make plans and resolutions... 

Pic: (anti-clockwise) Max, Huckie, At, and Nu. I missed these sweet loves and my zillion plants in the tea garden.

Thursday, January 25, 2024

from a place of absence

Scout's  harness in a Ziploc
stays a  door always ajar
becomes a souvenir in
a sweet completeness 
of loss... nostalgia

Scout's photo on the altar 
has guarded so fiercely 
hellish trails of regret 
just my two eyes...
all these tears

___________________________

Pic: Snow and sky in the backyard this weekend. The last couple of days have been so foggy... I've been white-knuckling it to and from work as visibility is very low, especially in low-lying pockets, and it's easy to imagine shapes where there aren't any and miss objects that only loom up at the last minute.

Wednesday, January 24, 2024

"mid"

I like the way the kids are using "mid" to describe things that are stuck in the middle to mediocre range. Here's my mid list for today.

*    Another day of freezing rain and grey skies... but not quite as cold and there was a fair bit of a thaw too.

*    I won't have my car back for five weeks (they have to order a part from Germany)... but they gave me a newer model as a loaner.

*    I headed to the gas station for the first time in years (Bluey is all electric). It felt spend-y to fork over 50$ for gas... but I found a lucky penny.

*    Last semester, I grandly agreed to give a talk in January 2024... and now it IS January 2024 and my talk is on Friday.  Thankfully, I was able to use my writing group time to get some slides done... but it did mean that I didn't get any new writing done.

*    I love, love, love teaching... but I'm on two search committees (SIX campus interviews--four more to go), three committees that meet every week for a total of four hours, on deadline for two career reviews, on deadline for recommendation letters for people's grad school applications, on deadline for rewriting our land acknowledgment, making final arrangements for two different guest speakers to visit campus (PBK and Women's History Month), arranging travel for the student honorary convention, vetting papers and programming the WGS portion of the MASAL conference, CASA report due next week... And the list for the next month goes on and on. Each of these things is important and has its own bulleted to-dos, and by itself, each would be something I enjoy doing. But cumulatively, having them all clustered together like this, feels overwhelming. One day at a time, I guess.

Pic: I cropped out guests' faces since I didn't ask people if I could post. But now the focus is on the happy plates (everyone is in the clean-plate club!) from our dinner party on Monday. There were two writers with new books out at the table (Sophfronia Scott and Jan Shoemaker) and I enjoyed introducing them to each other and felt a little bit like I was hosting a salon. Bonus peek of Nu at extreme right. I'm the black blob next to the blue-purple sweater (Big A) at the head of the table. Huck and Max are underfoot. 

Tuesday, January 23, 2024

all the things

Wow. What a day. 

Freezing rain all day, so I moved my classes online and then was committed to sitting with my laptop all day.

I also got into it with the very pro-Hindu nationalist people on my WhatsApp. Hope springs eternal in a teacher's breast I guess. If even one of them stops to reconsider their exclusionary stance, that would be helpful. But I can't do this every day--it's exhausting and draining and makes me question what kind of world I'm living in.

Then Big A woke up grumpy and I pushed back (I mean, he's not a toddler!) and then we fought on text for a bit. Then he "hearted" something I had said in snark and then I felt bad and then the fight was over. Just like that.

My car has been in the repair shop since Monday and they don't know how to fix it--they're waiting on input from the tech team. I was so alarmed by this, that I texted "Is my Bluey [what I call my car] OK?!? 😭" to the family chat... except I sent it to the repair shop by accident... and they texted back "We should be hearing something today. Bluey has a bit of a boo-boo." And I laugh-cried in embarrassment. 

Motaz Azaiza the passionate Gazan journalist has evacuated Gaza. He did such great work, and I'm glad he's safe, and so humbled that he's only 24!

So many of my U.S. friends texted me in a panic about Trump winning the NH primary... but I don't know what to tell them. Is the option really "Genocide Joe?" The lesser of two evils just seems more like the other evil day by day. 

And finally: another day of back pain. Whomp-whomp.

Pic: An icy Red Cedar through the railing on the Sparty (not official name, I think) bridge. From my Monday walk. 

Sunday, January 21, 2024

journeys

Nu starts a new day of term tomorrow.

At is in D.C. giving a talk to an organizing group who sprang for air tickets, hotel, and honorarium. So cool. 

Big A has been on the volunteer list for Gaza for weeks, but there has been no movement, because the organization cannot guarantee safety for its volunteers. This is the first time I've been okay with him going to a conflict zone. Twenty years ago, when he wanted to volunteer for Iraq (partly because it would forgive his med school debt), I vetoed it. I was even wary when he volunteered for COVID relief in NYC in early 2020 when things were baaaaad. But I feel like this is no longer even a choice. It's not going to get better until everyone who can help, helps.  

In the meantime, I'm so grateful a colleague is willing to travel with the honorary students to their presentation in St. Louis. Because Scout fell sick while I was at the event last year, convention hotel rooms now give me anticipatory anxiety and dread. 

Pic: The holly bush outside has been frozen for weeks now, and is now pretty in a different way.

Thursday, January 18, 2024

Three on Thursday: What I Wore

Me: Walking down the hall...

Student: OMG, Dr. M! I LOVE YOUR OUTFIT!

Me: (grinning) Calm down, E, this isn't a belt--it's because I hurt my back.

What I wore: Ugly back brace.

*

Me: Looking all around my office, and then in a stroke of sheer genius patting the top of head... (nope), and then defeatedly asking student--"L, can you see my glasses anywhere?"

Student: (calmly) They're ON your face.

What I wore: Reading glasses.

*

Me: Chuckling to myself because there's a sign in the faculty break room that says, "Your mom doesn't work here! Do your own dishes." And At had rightly remarked that their mom DID work there and righteously asked why "mom" and not "parent?" And then I realized that despite all that, At had left some unwashed silverware by the side of the sink.

What I wore: A smirk. You know what they say about socialists and sinks.

Thursday, January 11, 2024

still standing/standing still

I usually sing the praises of the Irish  around St. Patrick's Day, but let me start early this year. South Africa is standing tall with their case against the genocide in Gaza at the International Court of Justice in the Hague and Ireland appears to be the only Western nation supporting them. It is not a coincidence that a nation with a memory of apartheid regimes and another with a history of brutal colonization should team up to speak up for a people suffering both. 

I took little, life-affirming sips of the video clips of the trial online between classes and reveled in the moments of human solidarity. It is shameful that none of the major news channels here are airing this trial although we make a lot of noise about free speech. There's a YouTube channel for the proceedings

In the meantime, we've started bombing Yemen, one of the poorest countries in the world. 

Pic: A very tall snow person appeared on campus; they're wearing a wreath garland on their head.

Wednesday, January 10, 2024

meandering into meaning

Just finished up a reread of E.M. Forster's A Room with a View--what a lovely novel! I loved it just as hard as I did decades ago. A Room with a View is particularly lovely in the way it describes the Honeychurch family--loving, rambunctious, quirky--it reminded me of the reason I loved Tom Lake recently.

It also brought up a lot of memories about how "a room with a view" was my personal shorthand for an office of my own with a window--because as a graduate student and then as an adjunct I always shared an office with colleagues. And my first solo office was a windowless cell. So when I got to my current office, its sliver of a window was a realization of a long-time dream/hope/yearning; the kind comments on yesterday's post reminded me how much I prize it. (Although the view is mostly of a parking lot, the window is street-facing on one of our main academic buildings, and I leverage it to put up signs about issues that matter to me.)

It also felt particularly cute that yesterday I met a student named Lucy--like the protagonist of A Room with a View--in one of my classes. And then yesterday, out of the blue, the only other student I've ever had named Lucy, wrote to say they now live in Lansing and would like to get together for coffee. I also met someone recently whose name is Adela (a very unusual name and a primary character in another Forster novel)... I'm beginning to feel a bit like I'm being given clues and signs I haven't figured out yet.

Pic: Saving this very British picture for when I need a snortle. It's a mock cover of a children's series I devoured when I was a kid. Here are some of the original covers showing the various adventurous things the "Five" would usually be up to (scroll down).

Tuesday, January 09, 2024

bright spots

First day of classes. I love the energy. Every term I decide I'm going to be cool about it, but like clockwork I end up loving these people (so much). 
*
I spent 12 hours on campus today, so it's a good thing I was able to decompress in my office (even if only for a handful of minutes at a time taking care of my now very twinge-y back and legs). 
*
Our search committee met a wonderful slate of candidates all of whom could be excellent directors of our writing center (choosing between them is going to be so tough though). 
*
We finally got enough snow for it to stick around and look wintry (I almost wiped out at the exit to work which hadn't been plowed; thank heavens for 4WD). 
*
Pic: I'm so thrilled by the resilience of my office plants who were ignored all winter break but appear to have thrived (one geranium even decided to bloom)!

Sunday, January 07, 2024

8 - 8 - 8? Not quite.

Since the new semester starts tomorrow, I've been thinking a lot about the old socialist motto of "8-8-8" or "eight hours' work, eight hours' rest, and eight hours of what you will." My own day divides up differently: work is easily ten hours or more +/- two hours of commute time; there's a lot of "what I will" in my life--family, walks, reading, friends, cooking, entertaining, exercise, "chit-chatting"... so it's not surprising that it's rest/sleep that suffers a deficit. Arguably, those family-time things are restful too, so if I can get four hours of sleep at a stretch, I'm generally good. 

At least it's preferable to any of the available alternatives.

Pic: Out with Max by Scout's memorial this morning. Snow is still scanty, but it's supposed to snow all week... perhaps we'll get there after all.

Friday, January 05, 2024

Five on the last Friday of break

1) Everyone should get a couple of weeks off at the end of the year to rest, reset, and restore themselves. I think I've done all three this time. Happy to report that I'm not clawing myself or pulling out hair--my literal scars are healing. 

2) I'm SO excited to meet my new (and old) students and get started on my new (and old) courses.

3) Committee work will make it tough this term--my standing committees meet late on my teaching days and because I'm on a couple of search committees, I will be on campus until late every day next week either wining and dining candidates or doing a chunk of video interviews. Big A and Nu are going to have to step up to dinner every day next week and at least twice a week after that.

4) So. Many. Meetings. And these are such a big responsibility. It might be just one of the many meetings in my day, but it could be the most important meeting of the other person's day, and that's something to take very seriously. (I do, which is why they're so depleting.)

5) Pic: Max and Huck say they're not mad; they're just disappointed break is over. 

Spring incantation

oh, these needles of rain  the skies are full of surprises my only choice of speech is a quiet, topographical melody  for I bring us to fors...